By A Mirsab, TwoCircles.net,
Ram Madhav, senior BJP leader and national general secretary of the party, has grabbed the spotlight of international media after noteworthy goof ups during an interview with famous Al Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan.
Madhav showed courage by agreeing for the interview that was a part of Al-Jazeera’s show, Head to Head titled ‘Is Modi’s India flirting with fascism?’ This was also courageous for Madhav because he agreed to give an interview to a channel that his own government banned from airing in India for five days in April this year, after it showed parts of Kashmir in Pakistan and China.
But, on this occasion, Madhav agreed to the interview because he wanted to defend the government at an international forum. However, he found himself in such a surrounding that he made numerous mistakes by succumbing to the tactics of presenter Mehdi Hasan, a British journalist of Indian origin.
During the complete interview, Madhav was on the defensive foot, unable to articulate at critical questions put to him. He looked irritated at times and presumably was trying hard to maintain his posture during the whole interview.
Soon after airing of the program on December 26, Madhav’s comments during the interview became news all over the country. His ‘Akhand Bharat’ usage during the interview was caught by Indian media and opposition political parties got a chance to hit out at the BJP government. In response, BJP was forced to distance itself from Madhav’s remarks.
One of the foot-in-mouth moments for Madhav during the interview was, when he ended up sating “Your ISIS” to Hasan while defending his point about the terror group acquiring nuclear weapons. Hasan was visibly shocked and repeated “my ISIS?” thrice. Madhav realised his error and laughed to dispense any tension but did not apologise.
The use of the word ‘Your’ while referring to ISIS showed that Madhav did not study Hasan before appearing for interview. Logic and reasonable thinking have never been the forte of the RSS functionaries, but even if Madhav’s had Hasan as a ‘Muslim’ in his head while aligning him with ISIS, he would not have done so if he knew that Hasan was a Shia Muslim. The whole World knows that Shia Muslims are fighting physically against ISIS.
On another occasion, a question was posed to Madhav from the audience that Haryana government is funding to promote Hindu scripture ‘Geeta’ but why promote a single religious scripture in a secular country through government fund? Madhav tried hard to evade answering this question and said if minorities approach government with the proposal to promote their religious scripture, then the government might consider that too.
Hasan trickily asked him, “What is your opinion, should other religious scriptures be provided with government fund for promotion?” Madhav said, “It will be government’s part to decide”. Hasan repeated him to provide opinion but Madhav repeated the same answer.
Hasan, an experienced anchor, asked him, “Do you support government’s promotion of only Hindu scripture ‘Geeta’? Madhav instantly replied ’absolutely’, and there’s where he was caught as Hasan smiled and said, “That simply answers your opinion on other religious scriptures”.
Madhav was asked critical questions related with attacks on minorities, Dadri, lynching, incidence of exhumation & rape of Muslim woman, Award Wapsi and BJP MPs hate comments. None of these proved easy for Madhav to answer.
It would not be wrong to say that Madhav earned nothing from the interview for BJP and RSS which he intended initially and instead brought condemnation for the goof ups.